User blog:ErisLordFree/The Fastest Lepidopterist
With the new achievement for butterfly collecting, many folk will be visiting places with several kinds of butterflies and rounding up everything they can find, over and over, until either they get tired of clicking or run out of Watermelon Juice. If you want to do so efficiently—going to the fewest number of places, and within those options, the larger places that let you zoom out for easy butterfly-catching—here’s a guide to where they can be found with the fewest overlaps. Recommended Locations Explanations and Other Details Rare and Remote Leopard Lacewing is only found at Xishuangbanna – so while you’re there, you might as well stock up on the 8 other butterflies that will be cluttering up your backpack, which means you’ll want 9 open spots in your backpack to do serious Lacewing hunting. (You really need 11, if you count the spaces for chitin and the caterpillars you’ll pick up.) *Chinese Windmill *Common Jezebel *Eastern Festoon *False Apollo *Fivebar Swordtail *Great Nawab *Monarch *Southern Swallowtail I’d tell you to go somewhere else (anywhere else!) for most of those, because Xishuangbanna is not an easy butterfly-catching place, but the Lacewing is rare enough that you’ll be catching a lot more of everything else than of it. (In catching 10 Lacewings, I picked up 7-13 of most of the other butterflies, and 18 Monarchs and 23 False Apollos.) Clear the area of Banyan and Acacia trees before you start to make it easier to spot butterflies, and expect to do a lot of hopping to the edges of the screen to avoid the hassle of walking around the rivers. Queen Alexandras Birdwing is only at Mt. Victory, so that’s another must-visit place. If you went after Lacewings first, you’ve already got monarchs, swordtails, and jezebels (and if you didn’t, you’ll have other opportunities to catch them); the other butterflies you can catch here are: *Cruiser *Goliath Birdwing *Green Birdwing *Krishna Peacock *Purple Spotted Swallowtail *Ulysses This one needs TEN spots in the backpack, plus the chitin and caterpillar slots. And Mt. Victory isn’t any easier to jump around than the previous spot; it can be harder because all the hills do strange things to the jumping algorithms. Clear trees first and settle in for a long hunt. The good news: Every butterfly here except the monarch is worth at least 50 , and many are worth 75 . Mt. Victory may have the highest average butterfly value in the game. Rippon Birdwing is a nuisance. It’s only at Palu River Mouth and Buyu Balease—along with 5 other butterflies you’ll find in other places you need to go. Neither place is big enough to zoom out to hop around. Palu River Mouth has fruit trees and water on the ground; jumping around them may be harder, but the fruit and option of fishing for quick energy may appeal to lower-level players. Higher-level players, or those with plenty of food reserves, may prefer the all-trees-and-ferns landscape of Buyu Balease, which can be razed flat so it’s easy to spot the butterflies. Claudina – This is found at Lake Maracaibo and Angel Falls, but Maracaibo has the Mangrove Buckeye as well, so that’s my choice. You can also find the following: *Anna's 88 *Blue Morpho *Pink Tipped Satyr *Zebra Longwing And, of course, the Monarch. You’ll never be short of caterpillars again. 7 backpack slots (plus chitin and caterpillars); start by clearing vegetation a lot more firmly than you did for Xishuangbanna; you can’t see most of the butterflies at Lake Maracaibo if you don’t clear out the banyans and ferns. You may want to clear the frangipani and most of the fruit, too; it’s harder to see butterflies behind the flowers, and easy to accidentally click on the trees in front of them even when you can see them. Again, get used to jumping to the far corners instead of having to run back and forth (and up and down) to catch butterflies, especially if you’re on a system that gets heavy lag. Prepona and 89'98 are the other South American butterflies only available at a few spots, none of which overlap with the Claudina. There are four options, all in Brazil: Amazon River, Fonte Boa, Novo Progresso, or Rondonia. All have exactly the same 7 butterfly options, all the rest of which you may pick up with the Claudina, if you prefer. None of them are big enough to zoom out and jump around; all are cluttered with vegetation you’ll need to clear. You can pick up Blood Flower and some Fuschia for dye if you’d like. Fonte Boa and Rondonia are probably the most difficult because they’ve got water running through the landscape; Amazon River is only one that doesn’t, but Novo Progresso only has a small pond, and won’t be crowded with Starium hunters or amethyst miners. It’s probably easiest to just pick whichever spot has the closest buddy for you. Best Options Among Several Japanese Emperor is found in all 5 locations in Japan: Akakura Shrine, Koga Village, Kurume, Mt Fuji, and Nakadori Island. Kurume has more types of butterflies than the others (it has the jezebel and swordtail, which you can pick up elsewhere), so it’s not the best spot. The others have the same 8 butterflies. Koga and Akakura are both big enough to zoom out, and Akakura has wonderful wide open spaces in the middle and very few buildings—that’s my butterfly-hopping place of choice for tempura ingredients. In addition to several butterflies you saw in Xishuangbanna, you can catch: *Arhopala Hercules *Peacock Blue Eyed Pansy and Richmond Birdwing: The Pansy can be found throughout India and in northern Australia. Since the only other Australian butterfly not covered is the Richmond, I look to that instead of India. Ubirr is excellent—big enough to zoom out, few trees and most of them can be cut down, and the remaining Banana Trees won’t block your view the way the round fruit trees do. It does have several other butterflies to deal with: Common Jezebel, Fivebar Swordtail, Green Birdwing, Krishna Peacock, Monarch, and Ulysses; you’ll need 8 backpack slots (plus space for chitin and caterpillars). Silvery Argus and Southern Festoon: While you can catch the festoon with the Pansy, I prefer locations where you can zoom out for butterfly-hopping, and the Argus has plenty of those; the Festoon shows up in all of them. Astuvansalmi is my choice—it’s big enough to zoom out; you can cut down the trees and see everything clearly, and the only other butterflies are the Monarch and Peacock. Other locations you could use (so you can pick whichever is easiest for you to reach) include Pielinen, Lake Kemijarvi, and Irtysh River, all of which have some fruit trees that will obscure butterflies (on the other hand, will have food!), and several places too small to allow zooming out, like most of Finland. Cymothoe Sangaris and African Swallowtail have almost the same territory range—the Swallowtail is in two extra spots. The White Barred Emperor has an even broader range. The ideal spot would be a place that has few other butterflies, and is big enough to zoom out with few buildings in the way. There aren’t any—no zoom-outable spots in central and northern Africa. You’ll have to settle for a place small enough that you can see new butterflies spawning and deal with running or jumping to them. Congo River Basin is the for the Sangaris, and it’s as good as any of them. Other locations with just four butterflies (those two, the White Barred Emperor, and the ubiquitous Monarch) include Matopos Hills, which is on the Starium Route; Kasubi Tomb and Laetoli Footprints which are part of some quests and easy to clear of trees; and Monkey Bay and Osun-Osogbo, which have diamond mines. There are more options. Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, Question Mark, and Short-tailed Swallowtail are all over North America, including several where all three can be found. In most places, it’s just them and the monarch, and the United States has a few locations large enough to zoom out for easy hunting. The Great Smoky Mountains is loaded with Maples you can grab for syrup while you’re hunting butterflies. Sioux Lookout is big enough, but has buildings. (It also has a diamond mine and fishing, so maybe that balances things out.) McClusky Mountain and Yamsay Mountain are almost clones: more Maples, and Apple Trees that may make it hard to spot butterflies. Rounding Up the Stragglers Purple Emperor is only in a handful of places, and none of them allow zooming out. Ingolfsfjall is best; the only other resident is the Monarch. Danube Clouded Yellow is all over Eastern Europe. Lake Neusiedl is the only one I could find that’s big enough to zoom out; that makes it my top suggestion. You’ll pick up a lot more Monarchs, Peacocks and Southern Festoons while you’re collecting them. Category:Blog posts